


Desidirum

by JoAsakura



Series: Sunbreaker: The Book of Mouse [4]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, some nsfw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-04 22:27:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16355420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: Mouse's decisions culminate in deciding Uldren's fate, and the fallout that follows.





	Desidirum

_Syzygy/1_

 

“So, this is to be a _reckoning_ ,” Uldren says to Petra Venj, but his eyes never break contact with Mouse’s. He’s looking at Mouse like he doesn’t know him, but knows he should, and the Titan knows _that_ feeling all too well.

Cayde’s gun feels alien in his hand, and Mouse silently pleads with Uldren to say something, _anything_ , that won’t make it easier for Petra to put a bullet in his head, but instead he goads her about Cayde’s death instead, sneers at Mouse about how thin the division between light and dark is.

And in that moment, _Bevan Tar_ \- because in this situation Mouse, The Guardian and Bevan Tar, The Awoken Eutech he used to be, are two _very_ different people- realizes that is Mara’s Brother talking. That there is a moment of understanding in those golden eyes where he understands the enormity of Cayde’s death, of releasing Riven and the Scorn on his people, of what he had done to the Guardian standing over him all those months before.  He _wants_ them to kill him.

And Mouse lowers the gun. 

Petra grits her teeth, and her weapon doesn’t waver. Uldren closes his eyes, and there is the single crack of a gunshot in the chamber. A single gunshot muffled by meat and polysteel.

Mouse has been shot at _very_ close range well over three thousand individual times over the course of his unnatural life. This is the first time he’s ever put his hand over a gun before, though, and his gauntlet is a smoking wreck, there’s massive trauma to his hand, and Petra’s gun is utterly destroyed, the backlash of it’s explosion contained within a flickering ball of un-light/un-dark/alien energy that redirected it into Mouse’s arm instead of Petra’s hands.

There is a single heartbeat of confused silence.

Then.

“ **FUCK**!” Mouse grabs his own arm with a roar as the pain finally registers. Stel actually shrieks, his shell clacking frantically as he skitters around trying to heal it quickly. Petra blinks, letting her ruined pistol clatter to the floor.

“You actually _are_ insane,” Uldren Sov laughs mirthlessly. “I don’t regret _anything_ I did, Bevan! Not even having you killed all those centuries ago.” He gestures wildly at Cayde’s gun at the Titan’s feet. “END IT ALREADY!” His voice cracks and there is real panic in his eyes.

Mouse feels the shuddering wave of shock pass as Stel sorts him out and peels off the remains of the ruined gauntlet. “You can’t atone for anything if you’re dead… _husband_.”

Petra’s head snaps towards him so fast he thinks she’s broken something, and in that moment, Uldren lunges, fast as the hunter days of his youth, going for Cayde’s gun- to shoot himself, to shoot Mouse, to do something to end this.

And Mouse backhands him hard enough to shatter bone and leave the former prince slumped in a heap across the room. He winces a little, then turns to Petra. “I have a plan,” he says, and her expression tells him that she knows exactly how little of a plan he actually has.

 

_Imprecation/1_

 

Ouros has given them one mission, and one mission only. Get survivors out of Mare Imbrium, and get them to safety.

Liu Feng has had the transport’s engines on near-suicide burn from Mercury, and as the lunar surface rushes beneath them, Mouse seals his helmet, heading for the transmat pad. “We’re ready, Liu.” Stel says for him and Mouse gently shoves his Ghost away. “He wants me to stay here.”

“Good idea.  We’re gonna drop in a wave, don’t give the Hive time to find another route towards them, we get in, we get out- Magistrate’s orders,” she barks, and Mouse vanishes.

He reappears a hundred meters up and blows his super, using the sudden rush of energy to propel himself down between the wave of Hive and the ( _so few so few why are there so few of them_ ) Guardians. The impact of that burning maul hits like a meteor, blowing Guardians and Hive alike back from the center, fusing the dusty rock into glass. The ground shakes again, a thirty meters to his left, as another Sunbreaker hits. He can hear the Hive Wizards screaming their dirges and lets the grenades kick up a wall of fire as Liu Feng shouts orders at the survivors.

Ouros hadn’t known about the assault until it had started to go pear-shaped and the emergency calls had bled from the secure Vanguard channels into the Sunbreakers’, and she’d cursed them and the Consensus even as she’d mobilized her Titans. ( _Do not engage, just get them out_.)

Mouse dances backwards, away from the tide of glowing thralls scrambling over the bodies of their own dead through the razor-edged glass he’s left in his wake, and he feels _it_. He feels the pull of a power that can only be defined by what it is not. It is not death, not life, not darkness, not light, it is not silence but it is not song. It’s all of those things and none of them, and for one second, he catches sight of Crota.

And for that one second he’s lost in that sight until the thralls in front of him explode and Liu Feng is grabbing him by the back of his collar and tossing him backwards.

The fight back to the transport is desperate, the comms are full of panicked chatter and Mouse tries not to look too hard as he throws up a barrier, pushing every bit of solar he’s got in him through it to cut a swathe through the endless tide of green-glowing eyes. There are so many dead guardians.

It’s so much worse than Twilight Gap and he howls as the firestorm they create consumes the Hive but doesn’t stop them.

In the end, there are fewer than twenty Guardians rescued from their drop, and the numbers coming in from the other teams are no less heartening. Mouse doesn’t complain when Liu smacks him in the back of the head, and he scrubs his hand over his face, trying to wipe away what they all just saw.

 

_Syzygy/2_

 

Mouse staggers into the Oracle Engine’s chamber, covered in blue Scorn… goop. It’s too viscous even for Fallen blood, and not for the first time since he’s helped Petra fight her way here, he curses Uldren.

He’s got a chunk of amethyst crystal the size of his head tucked under his arm and when Petra wrinkles her nose at him, he’s grateful his helmet’s filtering out whatever the slime smells like.

But Petra brightens when she sees the rock. “You found the offering! Oh thank the stars!” She says, taking it gingerly from him.

“Sorry about the ooze,” he says, sitting on the floor heavily. “Are you going to explain to me what this is?”

“It’s an oracle. _The_ oracle. It allows communication with other realms. I know Mara is alive, and if she is, I know where she is. You’ll see,” Petra says quickly, making obscure adjustments on the interface. “Everyone in the reef believes Uldren to be dead, you know.”

“The same at the Tower,” Mouse mutters as Stel darts around Petra to watch her. “Ikora will murder me for eternity if she finds out.”

“For the record, perhaps stuffing Uldren back in a containment pod and hiding it in an abandoned habitat wasn’t the best plan you’ve ever had, cousin,” she says, but then pauses to glance back at him. “But I’m not in opposition to it anymore. I just don’t know what to tell Mara.”

The Oracle Engine sings to life before them, then, and Petra squares her shoulders. “My Queen!”

“Petra Venj,” Mara’s voice is as unaffected as ever, and as Petra describes the last several weeks, Mouse bristles just a bit as the Queen of the Reef interrupts her Wrath at key moments to prove just how much she actually knows.

Petra dances around Uldren’s supposed death for the more pertinent facts of his Scorn creations, and the immediate threat of the Ahamkara, at which point Mouse starts actually paying attention.

“An _ahamkara_?” He blurts out, armour scraping as he gets to his feet. “Riven is an AHAMKARA? WHAT THE FUCK, MARA?”

Petra wildly makes a cut-off gesture at Mouse, her good eye wide and furious, but then Mara’s cool voice echoes from the Oracle Engine. “My Wrath. Open up the gates of the Dreaming City, and call the Guardians here. If anyone is suited for this task, it’s them. Give them whatever they need to rid us of Riven,” Mara says, then pauses. “And I would speak for a moment, with our cousin.” She doesn’t need to add ‘in private’ because Petra bows immediately.

“Of course my Queen. I will get the word out now,” she says briskly, shooting Mouse a Look as she exits.

 Mouse and Stel exchange a glance as the Oracle Engine churns, then Mara says “At least do me the courtesy of taking off your helmet, Bevan Tar.”

 He immediately regrets it when he does, because his armour smells worse than he imagined. “Mara,” he says, tucking the helmet under his arm. Ever since he’s come to this place, this Dreaming City, each time Stel has rezzed him, more and more memory has been coming back. And with it, the itch of the alien power Uldren forced under his skin.

He hasn’t told Stel how much he feels like someone else these days.

“Bevan. Tell me, how much do you remember?” Mara asks disinterestedly.

“Guardians aren’t encouraged to chase their pasts, your majesty,” Mouse says, and he hears Stel groan.

“That’s not what I asked,” she says, and her voice drops just a little bit.

“I remember enough, Mara,” he shrugs at his Ghost 

“You’ve always been a menace,” she sighs suddenly. “I will return when I am able- a war rages here as well. Then we shall see how to fix the quandary your kind heart has left me in.”

 

_Lacuna_

 

He’s gotten lost four times trying to find his way to the temporary housing the Vanguard has promised the _Tower’s First Official Sunbreaker Emissary In Over A Century_. Stel has called him that since they arrived and it was only funny the first five times. It’s freezing cold, and the jacket over his undersuit does nothing to help, as he hoists the duffle with his armour over his shoulder.

“Everything’s changed so much since we were here last,” Stel says, bobbing at the huget buildings that make up so much of the Wall now. “Wait. Wait, doesn’t this look familiar?”

Mouse pauses and blinks. “It’s the First Pillar’s old training ground,” he says with a laugh. “it doesn’t look well used though.”

“That’s because the First Pillar and the other orders have been mostly disbanded,” the gravel-rough voice behind him says, and Mouse wheels on an armoured heel, face lighting up as he sees Saladin.  The old Wolf is in half-armour, fur cloak over his shoulders, and his Ghost bobs smugly next to him. “Stark said he heard you were coming back, and I didn’t believe him, Captain Tar.”

“My lord,” Mouse can’t help but grin as he clasps the old Lord’s forearm. “It’s good to see you sir.” 

“You look more blue than purple, Mouse, come on in,” the Wolf snorts, and Mouse follows him up familiar stairs to where Saladin had always maintained his offices. “I thought Awoken handled cold better than humans.”

“In my defence, I’ve lived on Mercury for decades. I’m not used to it anymore,” Mouse laughs, gravitating towards the massive fireplace. Even with City conveniences, Saladin’s aesthetic is still firmly in the Dark Ages, and Mouse has always respected that. “I heard about the SIVA incident with the Devils. I’m sorry, sir.”

 “I think Jolder and the others can finally rest in peace now,” Saladin grunts, pouring out two glasses of whiskey that Mouse thinks might be older than either one of them. It burns in Mouse’s throat and they drink in comfortable silence for a long while, the fire crackling. Then the old Wolf laughs. “I was drinking with Shaxx one night…” he starts, then stops as Mouse chokes on his drink. “What?”

“I have to know, does he take the helmet off or does he have a… a straw?” Mouse gestures vaguely. Somehow his glass has refilled itself, and he takes a swig. “Like stuck in a vent.”

 “You can ask Shaxx that yourself,” Saladin makes a dry, rusty sound that Mouse suddenly understands is a laugh. “But I said to him once that I wished Gerion… and you, reluctantly… had been born earlier. He would have made a magnificent Iron Wolf, and you… would have been _interesting_.”

“I’m going to try and take that as a compliment, _sir_ ,” Mouse snorts and takes a drink.

“Shaxx reminded me that both of you would have probably died in Old Russia with the others, though. I was glad then that you hadn’t,” Saladin’s eyes are distant and Mouse suddenly has an idea that he’s drunk enough to consider, and sober enough to know is probably stupid.

But he takes a heavy swig and sets his glass down before he puts himself firmly in Saladin’s field of vision. “I would have been honoured to serve the Iron Lords,” Mouse says, hand shifting twilight purple splayed on the olive-black of Saladin’s undersuit. 

There’s a long beat, and Mouse fully expects his old mentor to chide him and send him off to crash on his couch. And then Saladin’s one hand is on his waist and the other cards through the heavy silk of Mouse’s hair.  Violet fingers fist in heavy ballistic weave and a part of Mouse’s brain panics when he realises his tongue is halfway down Saladin Forge’s throat.

 The kiss breaks, but not entirely, lips ghosting against each other and they both recognise this for what it is. _Loneliness_. And they’re both perfectly fine with that assessment.

Titan armour is a travesty to get off in a hurry, something the countless tawdry Guardian romance novels in the City never manage to account for. They both laugh as the old Wolf shoves him hard against a wall and Mouse’s armoured boot clatters to the floor, and the laugh feels almost as good as Saladin’s thigh between his legs.

 But when the ridiculous struggle of clothes is over, and Mouse sinks, slick and half-purring down onto the older Titan’s shaft, that feels even better, he thinks. 

Stel and Stark have given them as much privacy as a Ghost can give a Guardian, and Mouse knows he’s leaving gouges down his old mentor’s back that Stark is going to grief him about later. His own shaft is pressed hard against the plane of hard muscle and coarse hair down the old Wolf’s belly as he grinds down on him and Mouse can’t help but growl a bit when Saladin pulls his head back, teeth grazing the faintly opalescent length of Mouse’s throat.

 Mouse comes hard, clinging to solid, familiar flesh, for what feels like the first time in a million years.

He’s not fully cognizant of anything until he feels the warm body next to him carefully disentangle itself from the furry cloak they’ve burrowed under. “Mmhgh?” Mouse blinks, sitting up to watch Saladin dress in the dim glow from the fireplace. “Ugh. Sorry, I didn’t mean to crash on you.”

There’s that dry, rusty laugh again. “It’s fine. You worked hard, Titan,” Saladin chuckles, buckling his boots. “I was leaving today anyways. I need to return to the Temple for a while.”

Mouse rakes back his hair. “Let me get sorted then.” 

“No, _stay_. Stark gave Stellamaris the security codes. At least until you find a proper place to live while you’re here. The temporary housing is only for Guardians who don’t spend any time here,” Saladin says as he shrugs on his breastplate. “I trust you to not wreck my quarters and eat all of my cheese.”

“I feel I can make no promises about cheese,” Mouse laughs, curling under the cloak again. “Thank you, sir.”

Saladin looks down at him, and gives him a thin smile. “I hope you find what you’re looking for, Captain Tar.”

“I hope so, too.”

 

_Syzygy/3_

 

Mara Sov, ascendant Queen, flickers with alien light as she stands in the middle of the ruined habitat. The containment cell is covered with a thin rime of frost and Petra rocks on her feet next to Mouse.

 A fourth had joined them, and the tall man in Crow armour stands grimly on Mouse’s other side.

 Jolyon Till, she’d introduced him as. The Crows’ current Field Commander had been unsurprised that Uldren wasn’t as dead as he’d been led to believe. Mara had requested him, and Petra hadn’t questioned it. And Mouse is somehow grateful for his presence.

“Petra said you worked closely with Uldren,” Mouse tips his head to look up at the Crow. He likes Jolyon, and he understands too well the mix of emotions that cross the sniper’s face. “I’m sorry for this.”

 “Honestly, I probably would’ve made the same call,” Jolyon says with a sigh as they watch Mara approach the frozen chamber. “Don’t apologise, Captain.”

“Please, just call me Mouse,” Mouse sags a bit. “I hate that stupid fake title keeps following me everywhere.”

 “It has gravitias,” Jolyon says softly and Mouse likes him a little bit more.

None of them are prepared for the surge of power that comes from the Queen as the chamber opens. Blinding violet-white, and Mouse can feel the hum of starlight and shadow in his teeth just as clearly as he can feel the Traveler. Under her touch, it seems like Uldren is unmade, remade, torn apart and reborn.

He suddenly, hysterically, thinks this is what it’s like to watch a Guardian born for the first time, except this is not the Light. This is something else entirely. This is what it was like when Oryx made his Taken. Except this was not the darkness either.

It is Uldren Sov, but it isn’t, when it all clears. His hair falls dead white around the shifting grey-blue of his face, but his golden eyes burn bright. And he looks at Mara, those eyes wide.

“Welcome back, brother,” she says with barely a hint of emotion, gently touching his face.

There is panic and relief and guilt and confusion all across his face in seconds, and Mouse knows that frenzied scramble of neurons a little too well. Then his eyes come to rest on the group of them past Mara.

“Commander Venj,” he says softly. “I am at your disposal.”

Petra’s jaw twitches but she nods as Uldren’s gaze shifts. Mouse watches the sad, hopeful smile twitch on Uldren’s lips and he hates the surge in his chest and the answering smile that pulls at his own. But then he sees the gaze pass him and fix on the Crow beside him, and as he watches Jolyon’s shoulders shake Mouse realises that the smile isn’t for him.

“Joly. I’m… sorry,” Uldren says very quietly, and the sniper nods brusquely. Mouse can see the unshed tears in his eyes, and the surge in his chest turns into a pain when Uldren finally looks at him without a shred of recognition, taking in Mouse’s hardsuit.

Nothing. “ _Guardian_ , I don’t…”

“He saved your life, brother,” Mara’s low voice is almost a hum. “Captain Bevan Tar, isn’t that correct, Titan?”

“Yes,” Mouse says hoarsely after a moment, and Uldren gives him a little bow.

“I know I don’t deserve your charity, after what I did to your friend Cayde. Thank you,” Uldren says perfunctorily, eyes darting back to Jolyon.

“You can’t atone for anything if you’re dead,” Mouse croaks out, then gives Mara a nod before he turns on his heel. “I’ll leave you to it.”

Mara finds him later in the habitat’s ruined garden, the vertical racks of plants long dead, and the starlight collectors long shattered. “I thought I would find you here,” she says pleasantly.

“You took every memory of me away from him,” Mouse says without looking at her.

“Riven’s curse ran deep in him. There was a price to cure him of his madness, and that price was you,” Mara says, her reflection shimmering in the thick windows. “Honestly though, Bevan. I’ve given you a gift.”

When Mouse finally turns to her, she looks out at the stars instead of him. “You… _imprinted_ on him at the birth of our world. And in return he dragged you away from your home, tortured you, had you murdered. Then he experimented on you to find a way to save me. That’s not love, Bevan, that’s dysfunction.” she says coolly. “You’re free of him now.”

“He did those things for _you_ , in _your name_ ,” Mouse can barely croak the words out.

“I never said the dysfunction was yours,” Mara finally looks at him, and her eyes are like new stars burning in the void. “You’ve done so much for our people, _cousin_. And you, more than any other Guardian, have a place among us. Bevan Tar of the 891, doctor, soldier, forgotten martyr to the Earthborn. _That_ is my gift to you. Your freedom to be those things again, without Uldren’s shadow on you.”

“And if I refuse your gift?” Mouse’s throat feels dry.

“That’s the beauty of it, Bevan. I’m a god now. It’s already done,” Mara says gently, and she’s gone, if she ever was there in the first place.

 

_Imprecation/2_

 

Mouse detours them to the Moon on the way home. He hasn’t spoken, save for a brusque goodbye to Petra, since he left. There are messages left in his comms, from Spider, from Asher Mir, from Ana, and he leaves them all unread. 

Stel is quiet beside him for the longest time, until they drop out of jumpspace. The ruined surface of Luna shines grey beneath them, and the Ghost’s shell clacks softly. “Mouse…” 

Very gently, Mouse presses his forehead to Stel’s shell, then pulls his helmet on. “Stay here,” he says, and drops out in transmat, a hundred meters above the rocky ground. When he triggers his super, in that moment, floating above, the solar flare immediately downshifts into the black-limned glow of an event horizon. He makes an inarticulate howl as the maul strikes the ground, the impact shattering the nearest wall of Mare Imbrium and folding the space beneath it, before erupting into a gout of dark fire.

There are the bodies of a thousand or more Guardians beneath the dust and stone, and he can feel the scrabbling remains of the Hive in the tunnels below as the shockwave courses across the crater.

As the hammer burns in his hand and they surge to the surface in a chittering swarm, he grins.

He’s not going home until the pain in his chest stops.


End file.
